In one of this week's weirder news stories, the Toronto Police tweeted this:
Toronto Police OPS
ADVISORY
High Park Zoo - 2 Capybara have escaped their pens and are in the park. If seen please call @TPS11Div 4168081100 ^cb
Yes, police departments in other cities are preoccupied with chasing bad guys, but here they're after giant rodents. Last year a peregrinating peacock was on the lam from the same zoo; I tell you life is thrilling in Toronto's criminal underworld.
What intrigued me about this, though, was the fact that the police alert and subsequent news stories used "capybara" rather than "capybaras" as the plural of "capybara". I know, I know, the story is exciting enough already without the added fillip of variant plurals, but I can't help myself. (In its tweet, the Toronto Zoo used the plural "capybara's", but the less said about that the better.)
The name comes from Tupi kapiʔiwara, from kapíʔi (grass, brush) + -wara (eater). Tupi is a language family of South America, from south of the Amazon.
Although some dictionaries mention the invariable plural "capybara" before "capybaras", corpus evidence, and searches on sites such as the Smithsonian and various zoos suggest that "capybaras" is more common. I don't know why we would choose to make the plural the same as the singular, as we don't do this for other rodents except, sometimes, beaver(s) (unlike members of the deer family, see this post about "moose"). I don't know what the plural is in Tupi but it really doesn't matter.
Personally, I like "capybaras". If any of you know of any reason why the plural should be "capybara" instead, speak now.
P.S.
If you find the English language fascinating, you might enjoy regular
updates about English usage and word origins from Wordlady. Receive
every new post delivered right to your inbox! You can either:
use
the subscribe window at the top of this page
OR
(if
you are reading this on a mobile device): send me an email with the
subject line SUBSCRIBE at wordlady.barber@gmail.com
Privacy
policy: we will not sell, rent, or give your name or address to
anyone. You can unsubscribe at any point.
Follow
me on twitter: @thewordlady
Thank you for clarifying that capybara is a tatpurusha.
ReplyDeleteI think the question of how to pluralise capybara actually can be found in Tupi morphology: add 'eta'(many) to make 'capybareta'.
ReplyDelete